Hello there, I'm Peter Schickely, and this is Schickely Mix, a program dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal, or as Duke Ellington put it, if it sounds good,
it is good. But it takes a lot of do-re-mi to float that good music on the air, and for supplying the necessary moolah, we owe a debt of gratitude to the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, and to this indispensable radio station, where I am hunkered down in modest
splendor. Our program is distributed on Wings of Song by PRI, Public Radio International. On another edition of this show, we talk about how the growth of Romanticism
in 18th and 19th century Europe was accompanied by, in the 19th century, more and more variety within one movement of a musical composition.
More frequent changes of texture, or tempo, or tonality, or whatever, and more extreme contrasts among sections. Let's encapsulate that development by listening to the
last movement of a Bach piece, followed by the last movement of a Brahms piece. In the Bach, the musical material for the whole movement is presented in the first few seconds,
literally. The material will be spun out in delightful way, it will be led through various keys, and given to different instruments. But in terms of building
blocks, what you hear in the first few measures is what you're going to get. There won't be any contrasting material introduced, there won't be any change of tempo, and there won't be much
variation in dynamics, that is, loudness. It's all smooth sailing. Paul Simon described this piece,
was a sunny day, not a cloud was in the sky, now when we get to the Brahms, written about a century and a half later, we're talking about one
of those dramatic summer days that's partly sunny, but there's a strong wind up there, because the clouds are moving swiftly across the sky. Sometimes it's bright, sometimes it's dark,
sometimes it's balmy, sometimes it's threatening. But there's an urgency that is never completely dispelled, even during the quiet parts of the day. Love those days. This movement features great
contrasts in tempo, and in the same time, it's a very powerful movement. It's a very powerful movement, tonality and dynamics. Here's some great music by Two of the Three Bees.
Okay, two pieces displaying two extreme
streams of contrast and variety. First, the last movement of Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. That was the English concert under Trevor Pinnock.
And then the last movement of the Brahms Piano Quintet, meaning, of course, piano and string
quartet, performed by the Budapest String Quartet and Clifford Curzon. And I should say that that's an old recording. Legendary performances, the album says,
the album says, available in mono only. And that's why it's mono. I just love that performance.
And even though it's a little noisy, I wanted to use it. I should mention, by the way, that there
is a slow introduction to that last movement, which I omitted for reasons of time. Man, I love
that piece. I would give anything to be able to play the piano in that. But listen, I could practice every day for 17 minutes. I could play it every day for 17 minutes. I could play it every day for
17 years, and it would still sound as if I had mittens on. I was at a chamber music evening at Itzhak Perlman's house once, and they were doing the Brahms, and Emanuel Axe was playing the piano,
and I got to turn pages for him. I mean, he didn't even really need a page turner, but I was in seventh heaven. I'm afraid that's as close as I'll ever get to playing that piece. My name's Peter
Shickley, and the program is Shickley Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
We want more variety. We want more variety. We want more surprise, less predictability. I'm telling you, it got to a point where at a special seminar I attended at Princeton in 1959,
the composer Milton Babbitt described the research, I guess you'd call it, of some musician mathematicians who were trying to determine, given a certain bunch of notes that had been played,
what the least expected next note would be. And the idea was that that, would be the most desirable next note for a composer to use. I kid you, as they say, not.
It certainly smacks of decadence, and it also feels wrong-headed. It seems to me that the more repetition you have, the easier it is to create surprise by breaking the pattern.
But what do I know? I know what's up next, that's what. It's a little suite of 20th century pieces in which you can never tell what's around the corner. There are three of these pieces, and unfortunately we don't have time,
but we'll try to hear all of the first one. We'll just hear the first half of it. The What Next Suite lasts a little under nine minutes. I'll see you then.
But she's still dancing in the night, I'm afraid of what I do, do, do
In the cantina, margaritas keep the spirit high
There I watched her, she spun around and wound in the warmth
Her body fanned the flame of the dance Dance, margarita, don't you know that I love you? Dance
You're under arrest! My children were raised, you know they suddenly rise They started slow along the road Oh, yeah Oh, yeah To do healthy, wealthy, and often wise
At three score and five, I'm very much alive I've still got the drive to survive with the heroes and villains
The What Next Suite
Featuring a lot of variety And contrast and texture within each piece The first was the first half of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments One of my favorite pieces around
That was the London Sinfonietta Conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen And I was reading something recently That was talking about a very early piano sonata by Stravinsky
And it was saying, this was basically a sort of a student work And it was saying how the greatest weaknesses in this piece were In the transitions between sections and between themes And of course, what Stravinsky ended up doing was saying
Okay, I just won't use transitions I'm exaggerating But what he did was take building blocks of material And just emphasize the seams Rather than try to disguise them Put those blocks up against one another
And relish the differences between them Then we had from an album called Avant-Garde Piano Another old LP Ernst Krennic
The piece is called Sex Vermessene And that does not mean very messy sex It means six pieces Vermessene means measure So I guess six measures
And these pieces are examples I think they were written, yes, in 1958 A time when people were applying serial techniques Which means arranging the tones in an order
C would be one, F sharp is two, A flat is three And then you use them consistently In that order Or in versions of that order And then people started serializing other things Dynamics
You call forte loud, one You call mezzo-forte, which is rather loud You call that two And so then you use the dynamics serially
Which of course results in music that is anti-expressive Because we think of, if you're singing softly And all of a sudden you sing loud That that has a dramatic, expressive Human feeling, an outburst
And then you use the dynamics But here it is being used absolutely mechanically It's now time for a forte So you put in a forte The rhythm is also serialized And one of the effects that has, of course
Is that you don't have any feeling of beat As a matter of fact, when you write a completely serialized piece like that It's almost like you're building the machine And I heard Krennic say this himself At that seminar I mentioned
It's like you build the machine And once you've built the machine The piece is written It's almost as if you just start the machine And it writes the piece According to the rules that you've made The other interesting thing, however
About that total serialization Is that you end up with a piece That is so irregular That it almost sounds like a random improvisation
Which according to David Burge's liner notes He's the pianist Is a thought that delights Krennic a great deal And finally, heroes and villains The Beach Boys
And the Beatles The Beach Boys fans among you And I certainly include myself among them Will recognize that that is not the form of heroes and villains That became a hit
This is an alternate take An earlier take 1967 When they were working on an album That was going to be called Smile And this was a very enigmatic period In the Beach Boys history
Because this was going to be a breakthrough album This was going to be the kind of album That blew everybody's minds But then some mindsets came along And the fans got blown within the group And somehow the album never got made
And even parts of it got lost Smile never happened And Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band did happen
And the Beatles sort of became the music changing group And the Beach Boys really got shut out for a long time The album that did come out was Smiley Smile
Now I happen to feel that it's one of the best albums ever I love Smiley Smile But people who were expecting a sort of a Sgt. Pepper Were very disappointed
The interesting thing is that the original idea of the album Smile though Was to quote Brian Wilson in an interview It will include lots of humor Some musical and some spoken It won't be like a comedy LP
There won't be any spoken tracks as such But someone might say something in between verses And as you heard there was a you're under arrest in there That's apparently the kind of thing he was talking about He called Smile a smile
He called Heroes and Villains a three minute musical comedy But in the final version the one that got released It has a rather different feel It's smoother and doesn't have as much comedy
So now I think it's time to I can't believe this Hello
Yes Well so do I Yes they're one of my favorite groups too But the Beach Boys song happened to fit in better With what I was illustrating
If you were paying attention to what I was saying No I'm not being impudent sir It's just that I'm on the air here Well go ahead I don't care Sure
My name is Peter Schickely S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E E-L-E And the program is called Schickely Mix
From P-R-I That stands for Public Radio International Well that's all very interesting sir But I really have to get back to the show Goodbye Man
So where were we Oh yeah the 20th century In western music As in western physics There's a law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction
So while many romantic composers were writing longer and longer symphonies Involving more and more sudden contrast Or gradual transformation within movements
Other composers started going back to the idea of shorter movements With little or no change of texture There was often a nostalgic aspect to this development
Many of these pieces were neo-gothic Or neo-classical meaning neo-18th century Or neo-folk music There was a feeling of back to basics Which as it happens
Is the name of this show Of course lots of composers during the 19th century Wrote short pieces Especially for piano That had one character throughout As a matter of fact they were usually called character pieces
But I'm talking about the forms associated with major works As early as the 1820s Beethoven and Schubert were writing piano sonatas That lasted 40-45 minutes
A century later Hindemith wrote three piano sonatas Ranging in length from a mere 11 minutes to 26 minutes A Mahler symphony can last well over an hour
Millau wrote a little symphony that lasts 3.5 minutes Of course the interesting thing in terms of contrast Is that the late Romantic symphonies got so long How long did they get?
They got so long that one part of a movement One section with a fairly uniform texture Might be as long as a whole movement Of a Bach or Vivaldi piece Now one of the most
One of the most important figures In the development of the short uniform texture aesthetic Was Eric Satie As early as the 1880s While Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Bruckner
Were creating huge symphonic edifices Satie started writing short, simple, hypnotic pieces The most famous of which are the Gymnopédie Our next suite is the
Set it in motion and let it run suite Now I don't mean to imply anything mechanical In a pejorative way I just mean that the texture you hear At the beginning of each piece Will be pretty much retained throughout
Just as in the Bach work With which we started the program This suite has three numbers And lasts about ten minutes
Thank you.
The set it in motion and let it run suite. Eric Satie, Charlie Parker, Lou Harrison. We began with the second of
Satie's Prelude du Nazarene. These are three preludes written in 1892, and they're mostly
one texture. In this case, most of the texture is this chorale-like, this sort of hymn-like writing,
and then an occasional solo line. That was Aldo Ciccolini playing the piano.
Then we had Charlie Parker, a tune called Confirmation, one of his own tunes, and that was
Al Haig on piano, Percy Heath on bass, and Max Roach on drums. And the only major textural change
in a cut like that is during the solos. The sax drops out for the piano solo, and the piano more
or less drops out for the bass solo, and everybody drops out for the drums. Otherwise, there's not a big effect. You don't attempt to get different sounds. You just spin it out, wonderfully in this case, when you're
talking about Charlie Parker. You spin it out, just as Bach does. As a matter of fact, a lot of people have commented on the similarities between what you might call mainstream jazz and Baroque music.
In both cases, you have a bass that tends to go along, in this case, for almost that whole cut, the bass is basically walking along on quarter notes, which is very much like a Bach.
It's not a bass that's going to go along with the bass, but it's a bass that's going to go along with the bass. And also, the use of only a few note values, rhythmically. Bach can just go a long time with just
eighth notes and sixteenth notes. You get whole movements that have hardly anything but those two
note values in them. And jazz gets a lot out of just swung eighth notes. You get whole movements that have hardly anything but those two note values in them.
So, with wonderful little triplets, little three notes and a beat thrown in there. Okay, and then finally, we had Keith Jarrett playing Lou Harrison's piano concerto.
The New Japan Philharmonic was conducted by Naoto Otomo, and that was the last movement, Allegro Moderato.
And in this case, we have an interesting combination of Asian influences with a sort of perpetual motion that, as a matter-of-fact, sounds somewhat like
some sati pieces not the one we heard but other ones okay I mentioned folk
music earlier as a uniform texture influence a lot of folk music comes from situations that are not performances in a formal concert sense singing or
playing for yourself family gatherings dances musicians in such surroundings don't feel that they have to make quote interesting arrangements of songs or
dance tunes or that they have to build interesting programs with a lot of variety in them as they might feel or be told to feel if they were performing for
a large audience of total strangers sitting in auditorium seats a lot of folk music even if it's fast has an unhurried feel to it it can be
refreshing to hear music that says you come to me I'm not coming to you I'm here and I'm taking my time you're welcome to listen if you like
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Listen, you know, I am on the air here.
No, I know, but listen, I love them too. But that would, I don't have time for that.
Well, but I don't like to play just part of a... Okay, yeah, now that's right. I only played part of the Stravinsky. You're right. Just, what, the last two,
the last 32 seconds, you say? Look, I'll make a deal with you, okay? I'll play it, and you get off my back, and don't call the station manager, okay? Is that a deal? Okay, you've got it.
All right, folks, I didn't, didn't think we were going to be having tidbit time this week, but I was wrong. Here, by minuscule but insistent popular demand,
is some music that I think you'll agree is not cluttered with excess variation.
The Beatles, the coda section from Hello Goodbye into Mozart, Symphony No. 24. And that's Chickalimix for this week.
Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Music, and by this radio station and its members. And not only that, our program is distributed by PRI,
Public Radio International. We'll tell you in a moment how you can get an official playlist of all the music on today's program with record numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number. This is program number 71.
And this is Peter Sickley saying goodbye and reminding you that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi. You're looking good. See you next week.
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If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped self-addressed envelope to Schickely Mix.
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